Syria Hysteria Dooms Obama's Plan To Destroy ISIL

[Published 21 September 2014]


President Obama’s failed policies in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Egypt and the West Bank do not bode well for the success of the President’s current plans to end the threat to world peace posed by the meteoric rise of both the Islamic State in Syria and the Levant (ISIL) and the Al-Nusrah Front (ANF).

That threat was articulated by UN Security Council Resolution 2701 - passed on 15 August - which expressed:

” its gravest concern that territory in parts of Iraq and Syria is under the control of Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and Al Nusrah Front (ANF) “

Acting under Chapter VII of the UN Charter—the Security Council strongly condemned:

“the indiscriminate killing and deliberate targeting of civilians, numerous atrocities, mass executions and extrajudicial killings, including of soldiers, persecution of individuals and entire communities on the basis of their religion or belief, kidnapping of civilians, forced displacement of members of minority groups, killing and maiming of children, recruitment and use of children, rape and other forms of sexual violence, arbitrary detention, attacks on schools and hospitals, destruction of cultural and religious sites and obstructing the exercise of economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to education, especially in the Syrian governorates of Ar-Raqqah, Deir ez-Zor, Aleppo and Idlib, in northern Iraq, especially in Tamim, Salaheddine and Niniveh Provinces;”

America has subsequently acted as though Resolution 2701 had never been passed.

In his speech to the American nation on 11 September Obama declared:

“Now let’s make two things clear: ISIL is not “Islamic.” No religion condones the killing of innocents, and the vast majority of ISIL’s victims have been Muslim. And ISIL is certainly not a state… It is recognized by no government, nor the people it subjugates.”

The President is wrong on both counts.

Firstly — ISIL is Islamic — as its formal Declaration of Statehood on 29 June 2014 proclaims - and this following analysis asserts:

“The Islamic State is not only a terrorist group. It is an extremist, Islamist, political and military organization that holds a radical interpretation of Islam as a political philosophy and seeks to impose that worldview by force on Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Expelled from al-Qaeda for being too extreme, the Islamic State claims to be the legitimate ruler of all Sunni Muslims worldwide. They have established what they regard as a state which includes large swaths of territory in Syria and Iraq, governed from Raqqa in Syria.

It advances a number of theological opinions to support its claims. Its adherents hold that they are merely practicing Islam fully, pronouncing those who disagree with them takfir (heretics).

This designation is used as religious justification for killing the Islamic State’s opponents”

Secondly - ISIL is a State - meeting the legal requirements of Article 1 of the 1933 Montevideo Convention:

“The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications:
(a) a permanent population; (b) a defined territory; (c) government; and (d) capacity to enter into relations with the other states.”

Thirdly - Obama’s claim that ISIL is recognized by no other government is irrelevant — as article 3 of the Montevideo Convention makes indisputably clear:

“The political existence of the state is independent of recognition by the other states."

Obama’s false assumptions are a recipe for policy failure — as the goals enunciated by Obama in the same address clearly demonstrated:

“Our objective is clear: we will degrade, and ultimately destroy, ISIL through a comprehensive and sustained counter-terrorism strategy.”

Destroying the UN condemned Al Nusrah Front did not rate a mention. A lukewarm response from 57 Islamic States to help defeat ISIL’s declared world threat to peace was not factored into Obama’s thinking.

Four days later an international conference held in Paris made it clear that Syria was not even part of the battleground where ISIL was to be confronted, degraded and destroyed.

Mouram Daoud—a member of the National Coordination Committee for Democratic Change in Syria — an internal opposition coalition — opined that ISIL cannot be defeated militarily without Syria and Turkey’s backing:

“The US administration should first pressure the Turkish partner to stop the flow of jihadists through its airports and stop buying oil from IS. According to [United Nations] Resolution 2170, the US will not be able to strike IS sites in Syria without the approval of the Syrian government, which is eagerly awaiting this type of cooperation to restore its international legitimacy. But the US will not include the Syrian government in this war, and will not recognize the government either. This means that the US will stick to its decision to only provide weapons to the Syrian [rebel] factions.”

Obama’s mantra - first delivered in August 2011 - remains unchanged:

“The future of Syria must be determined by its people, but President Bashar al-Assad is standing in their way. For the sake of the Syrian people, the time has come for President Assad to step aside.”

Not even 200000 deaths and the creation of millions of Syrian civilian refugees since 2011 have produced any momentum for rapprochement between Obama and Assad that would enable Assad to extend - and Obama to accept - any invitation to confront ISIL in occupied Syria.

Any expectation that Assad and his backers — Russia, Iran and Hezbollah — will help Obama by destroying ISIL in Syria - is a pipe dream.

Palestine - Quartet and Two-State Solution Sink into Political Oblivion

[Published 7 July 2016]


The Quartet — America, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations — has effectively consigned any negotiated two-state solution to political oblivion with its latest Report.

Two statements in the Report stymie any resumption of negotiations — stalled since April 2014.

1. “The Quartet reiterates that unilateral actions by either party cannot prejudge the outcome of final status negotiations and will not be recognized by the international community.”

Unilateral actions by the Palestinian Authority - disbanded in January 2013 - have already seen the international community:

(i) Admit “Palestine” as a member State of UNESCO on 29 October 2011 in contravention of UNESCO’s own constitution

(ii) Accord “Palestine” non-member observer State status in the United Nations on 29 November 2012

Such acts of recognition by the international community — over Israel’s strident objections — have hardened Palestinian demands and expectations that their goals can be achieved without negotiations requiring any concessions to Israel.

Reversing these decisions is a Quartet pipe dream.

2. “Gaza and the West Bank should be reunified under a single, legitimate and democratic Palestinian authority on the basis of the PLO platform and Quartet principles and the rule of law, including control over all armed personnel and weapons in accordance with existing agreements.

Reunification under the “PLO platform” sounds the death knell for the Quartet’s mediating role and the two-state solution.

Hamas will certainly not become a willing player in its own extinction.

The Quartet obviously has not considered how such reunification could be achieved whilst Hamas’s own Covenant declares:

“Secularism completely contradicts religious ideology. Attitudes, conduct and decisions stem from ideologies.

That is why, with all our appreciation for The Palestinian Liberation Organization — and what it can develop into - and without belittling its role in the Arab-Israeli conflict, we are unable to exchange the present or future Islamic Palestine with the secular idea. The Islamic nature of Palestine is part of our religion and whoever takes his religion lightly is a loser.

“Who will be adverse to the religion of Abraham, but he whose mind is infatuated? (The Cow - verse 130).

The day The Palestinian Liberation Organization adopts Islam as its way of life, we will become its soldiers, and fuel for its fire that will burn the enemies.

Until such a day, and we pray to Allah that it will be soon, the Islamic Resistance Movement’s stand towards the PLO is that of the son towards his father, the brother towards his brother, and the relative to relative, suffers his pain and supports him in confronting the enemies, wishing him to be wise and well-guided.”

Replacing “secular-democratic Palestine” with “Islamic-autocratic Palestine” is certainly not the Quartet’s prescription for achieving any realistic two-state solution — but this is what Hamas demands and will never abandon.

The Quartet is living in fantasy land if it believes otherwise.

“Democratic Palestinian authority” involves free and fair elections that Hamas and the PLO have both been unwilling to entertain since 2006. Given the rivalries between the PLO and Hamas such elections remain a figment of the Quartet’s imagination.

The Quartet — the most powerful and influential mediator in history — became totally irrelevant after it was restructured in July 2015. This latest Report will become yet another historical document attesting to the failure to achieve the two-state solution as envisaged by the Oslo Accords and the Bush Roadmap.

The time has surely arrived for trilateral negotiations to be commenced between Israel, Jordan and Egypt to allocate sovereignty in Judea and Samaria (West Bank) and Gaza between their respective sovereign States.

Time for the out-of-tune Quartet to bow out and give this Trio the world stage.

Islamic Lifelines Can Prevent Islamic State Dead Lines

[Published 14 October 2015]


Australia was introduced to a high school chaplain and Muslim community leader Sheikh Wesam Charkawi on one of Australia’s most widely viewed TV shows - Q and A - last Monday evening.

Australians were still trying to come to terms with the shooting murder of a 58- year-old police department accountant by a 15-year-old Muslim youth dressed in black robes shouting “Allahu Akbar” outside NSW Police Headquarters in Parramatta some 10 days earlier.

Indeed the Parramatta murder was the third such instance involving Muslims in Australia in the last year - culminating in the loss of three innocent lives and the deaths of the three perpetrators.

Yet Sheikh Charkawi told his audience:

"Our faith teaches to withhold our hands from the breaking the branch of a tree, let alone taking the life of a human being, which equates to taking the life of humanity and saving the life of one amounts to saving the life of all. These are bedrock principles"

The Sheikh’s viewpoint was a revelation - considering the widely held belief that Islam with its Koranic concepts of jihad, martyrdom and forced conversion of non-Muslims was anything but the sanctity-of-life faith portrayed by him.

Sheikh Charkawi in seeking to explain the circumstances of the Parramatta murderer opined:

"I’m seeing a lot of identity issues with the young men and women and I keep hearing from many on the streets and in the schools that I visit that they tell us that we don’t belong. They say that we’re not part of the Australian society, we’re not part of the Australian community, that we’re terrorists, that we’re extremists, that our religion is one that is of destruction and loss of life and so on and so forth. Now, you’ve got to remember that these people were born into the age of terror and they’re being told that they don’t belong. What that leads to is to marginalisation and isolation, and if you add that to the mix of the propaganda that is being put forward by the groups like ISIS, it’s a very dangerous mix and so you see that it requires a whole of society effort and that’s the reality of it."

Left unanswered by the Sheikh was why such marginalisation, isolation and propaganda could lead a 15-year-old Muslim boy to take the life of another human being had he been properly instructed in the bedrock principles of Islam as enunciated by the Sheikh.

Instead the Sheikh tried to pass the buck - stating:

"If we take this issue and we restrict it to the Muslim narrative and we say that this is a Muslim problem, what happens is you can’t then step back and look for other empirical evidence as to any underpinning or driving forces that may be at hand here."

With the greatest respect to the Sheikh it is indeed a Muslim problem resulting from failing to properly educate its adherents from an early age that:

1. the taking of life is contrary to the principles of Islam

2. negative attitudes or grievances held by a Muslim cannot be resolved by taking the lives of other Muslims or non-Muslims

3. If the religious instruction afforded Muslims is faith-based on the bedrock principles espoused by the Sheikh — then attempts by Islamic State or other groups to recruit Muslims to their murderous ranks will surely fail.

Let the Australian Muslim community condemn those who seek to violate the sanctity of life in mosques and madrassas as this video recently taken in a mosque in Gaza so chillingly demonstrates.

The silence so far has been deafening.

Islamic State - Egypt Wakes Up - When Will America And Russia?

[Published 24 February 2015]


Whilst the American—led coalition continues its largely ineffectual air strikes in Iraq and Syria — Islamic State has spread its barbaric tentacles into Libya with alarming rapidity.

Islamic State has claimed responsibility for:

1. Attacking Tripoli’s downtown luxury hotel in January - the Corinthian - which left 11 dead

2. The brutal mass beheading of 21 Egyptian Christian Copts

3. A multi-pronged suicide attack that killed at least 45 people in the town al Qubbah in Libya’s east.

4. Seizing the university in Sirte - deposed dictator Muammar Gadaffi’s hometown.

Egypt’s President - Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi—has called for intervention by the United Nations:

“What is going on in Libya could change this country into a breeding ground that could threaten the whole region, not only Egypt. Egypt, the Mediterranean Basin and Europe have to deal with this problem because the mission was unaccomplished, was unfinished by our European friends. We abandoned the Libyan people as prisoners to extremist militias.”

An emergency meeting of the UN Security Council was told this week by Libya’s Foreign Minister Mohamed Dayri:

“Libya needs a decisive stance from the international community to help us build our national army’s capacity and this would come through a lifting of the embargo on weapons ... so as to deal with this rampant terrorism,”

The Security Council ignored his plea — and with good reason.

Libya currently has two Governments — one located in Bayda and the other in Tripoli. In November 2014 Libya’s Supreme Court held the Bayda Government to be illegal and unconstitutional - a decision ignored by its two principal backers - the United States and the European Union.

Removing the arms embargo — in force since 2011- would mean new shipments of arms could risk ending up under Islamic State’s control.

U.N. special envoy to Libya - Bernardino Leon - has said that Islamic State and other militants can only be defeated with a united Libyan government in place that has strong international support.

Any expectation that the United Nations can mediate between these rival Governments to forge a unity government to end ongoing hostilities and divisions in Libya is fanciful.

Leon himself has frankly admitted the immediate threat Libya faces from Islamic State:

“In Libya, Islamic State has found fertile ground in the growing post revolution political instability, capitalizing also on the weakness of state institutions and state security sector,”

EU foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini has also acknowledged Libya’s parlous situation.

“What we are seeing today in Libya is a double threat: it is a threat of a country that is breaking apart and of a country where Daesh (Islamic State) is taking power and infiltrating,”

President Obama’s urgently needs to rethink his September 2014 assessment that Islamic State:

1. Is not Islamic

2. Is not a state but only a terrorist organisation with no other vision

3. Can be degraded and destroyed by an American-led coalition

Professor Deborah Lipstadt has succinctly summed up President Obama’s continuing political blindness:

“He has bent over backwards to try to separate [Islamic State] from Islam, Sometimes people try to keep an open mind. And when you have too open a mind, your brains can fall out.”

Islamic State continues to morph as groups such as “Province of Sinai “ — creating mayhem and havoc in the Egyptian desert area neighbouring Israel and Gaza - swear allegiance to it

Islamic State will continue acquiring territory whilst military action remains unauthorised by a United Nations Security Council resolution.

America and Russia must both be brain dead in ignoring Islamic State’s increasing threat to their vital respective interests in the Middle East.

Remembering Australia's First Jihadist Attack - 1 January 2015

[Published 30 December 2014]


The Department of Veteran’s Affairs announced last March that the centenary of the Battle of Broken Hill on 1 January 2015 would not be formally commemorated by the Australian Government.

That decision will now be seen in hindsight by many as a wise one indeed — following the fallout resulting from the horrific Martin Place siege perpetrated by self-styled Islamic cleric Man Haron Monis just two weeks ago - that claimed his life and those of two innocent civilians.

However Nicholas Shakespeare has written a novella — ”Oddfellows” - based on this little known event — to be published by Random House in January - ensuring this centenary will not pass unnoticed.

Shakespeare has written a poignant article - “Outback Jihad” - in which he graphically describes what the locals call “The New Year’s Day Tragedy”:

“The tragedy was a desperate response, in the least likely spot, to a jihad announced on the other side of the world. On 11 November 1914 — 100 years ago this month — the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed V, and caliph of all Muslims, who had earlier signed a treaty with Germany, declared a holy war against Great Britain and her allies, “the mortal enemies of Islam”. The Turkish sultan’s call overlooked the Christianity of his own allies in Germany and Austria-Hungary, and was virtually ignored by Muslims, save for some small-scale mutinies in Egypt and Mesopotamia, and in Broken Hill where two disaffected “Turks” decided to launch a suicide mission under a homemade Turkish flag. Their target: a train of 40 open ore wagons carrying more than 1200 holiday-makers…

At 10 am on 1 January 1915, the long and crowded train pulled away from the Broken Hill platform. It had been a town ritual since 1901: on New Year’s Day, the Manchester Unity Independent Order of Oddfellows, a friendly society founded to embrace education and social advancement, held a picnic 25 kilometres away at a shady creek in Silverton…
Less than ten minutes after leaving the station, the train slowed down, the driver having been warned that sand had drifted across the line. The engine stoker was standing out on the footplate when he noticed a red cloth fluttering above a white cart. His first thought: someone’s exploding defective ammunition. But he dismissed it. No one would be venturing out with a powder magazine on New Year’s Day…

... They chugged past. The driver noticed what looked like an insignia on the red cloth. What this was, he couldn’t make out. Then a breeze sprang up, the cloth unfolded, and the driver saw a yellow crescent, like a banana, and a star.

At that moment, a pair of white turbans bobbed up from the trench—dark faces, the tips of rifles—and the driver heard two gunshots. One bullet hit the sand, spitting dust against the engine. The second bullet struck the brake van, embedding itself in the woodwork…”

In the ensuing melee and mayhem that followed for the next three hours—six people (including the attackers) were killed and seven injured.

Shakespeare records:

“The two soldiers of Allah were not Turks, but British passport-holders from India’s north-west frontier, a region now divided between Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

One was Badsha Mahomed Gül:

“Born in the mountainous Tirah region, Gül had come to Australia as a cameleer. When the camel business declined, he had worked in a silver mine until the outbreak of war, and was laid off after all contracts with the German smelters were cancelled…

Three days after the tragedy, a confession was discovered, tucked under a rock and written in a mixture of Urdu and Dari, in which, astoundingly, Gül claimed to have visited Turkey four times — and even to have enlisted in the sultan’s army…"

Gül’s accomplice was Mullah Abdullah:

”.. a disgruntled old cameleer with a limp. Aged 60, he had lived in Broken Hill for 15 years. Different skin colour, strange clothes, not Anglo-Saxon —boys laughed when he hobbled by and chased him down the street, throwing stones. He never retaliated, but several times complained to the police, who failed to act.”

Eerily reminiscent of Man Haron Monis and his numerous brushes with the legal system:

“He (Abdullah) was not trained as a priest, but he had priests in his family. In the absence of a religious leader, he had begun to take on that role in “Ghantown”, as the North Broken Hill camel camp was known.

As well as acting as imam, he served as the butcher of his community, slaughtering animals in the manner stipulated by Islamic law. The fact that he was not a member of the butchers’ union in the most unionist town in the country brought him into conflict with those who needed little excuse to treat a Pathan from north-west India as an enemy alien. The most aggressive of his persecutors was the local sanitary inspector, a short, mournful-looking Irishman called Cornelius Brosnan.”

Broken Hill’s current mayor — Winston Cuy — acknowledges there are sensitive issues in the incident such as religion and civilian deaths.

“Broken Hill will be recognising it. What are the words you use and how do you commemorate it?”

Christine Adams — Curator of the Broken Hill Sulphide St Railway and Historical Museum — provides a sensible pointer:

“We think that it needs to be treated with a certain amount of tact. It was two people, what they did was a terrible terrible thing, it wasn’t a nation”.

Islam Must Degrade And Destroy Islamic State

[Published 26 December 2014]


The impassioned plea by the father of a Jordanian F16 fighter pilot captured by Islamic State has shot down attempts by American President Obama, British Prime Minister David Cameron, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott and the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) to distance Islam from the Islamic State (ISIL).

Speaking to the media - the father of Islamic State’s star captive - 1st Lt. Mu’ath al-Kaseasbeh, - said:

“I direct a message to our generous brothers of the Islamic State in Syria: to host my son, the pilot Mu’ath, with generous hospitality. I ask God that their hearts are gathered together with love, and that he is returned to his family, wife and mother.

We are all Muslims.”

This desperate cry for mercy stands in stark contrast to what President Obama stressed at a media conference in August:

“Let’s be clear about ISIL. They have rampaged across cities and villages killing innocent, unarmed civilians in cowardly acts of violence. They abduct women and children and subject them to torture and rape and slavery. They have murdered Muslims, both Sunni and Shia, by the thousands. They target Christians and religious minorities, driving them from their homes, murdering them when they can, for no other reason than they practice a different religion.

They declared their ambition to commit genocide against an ancient people. So ISIL speaks for no religion. Their victims are overwhelmingly Muslim, and no faith teaches people to massacre innocents.”

Cameron has been equally as strident:

“We should be clear: this is not the “War on Terror”, nor is it a war of religions. It is a struggle for decency, tolerance and moderation in our modern world. It is a battle against a poisonous ideology that is condemned by all faiths and by all faith leaders, whether Christian, Jewish or Muslim.”

Abbott was eager to support Obama and Cameron’s statements — telling a media conference during the Martin Place siege in Sydney last week:

“But the point I keep making is that the ISIL death cult has nothing to do with any religion, any real religion.”

These Presidential and Prime Ministerial statements had followed a most explicit condemnation of Islamic State by Iyad Ameen Madani - the Secretary General for the Organization of Islamic Cooperation — the collective voice of the Muslim world - representing 57 countries over four continents comprising 1.4 billion Muslims - the second largest inter-governmental organization after the United Nations.

As Vatican Radio reported on 25 July:

"In a statement, he [Madani] officially denounced the “forced deportation under the threat of execution” of Christians, calling it a “crime that cannot be tolerated.” The Secretary General also distanced Islam from the actions of the militant group known as ISIS, saying they “have nothing to do with Islam and its principles that call for justice, kindness, fairness, freedom of faith and coexistence.”

Yet the simple plea of one distraught Jordanian parent pleading for his son to be set free - stressing that “we are all muslims” — will certainly sheet home the distinct unease being felt by non-muslims living in Sydney — still reeling from the Lindt Chocolat Café siege and subsequent shoot out in Martin Place killing two innocent civilians and the self-styled Islamic cleric who perpetrated the siege.

Such unease subsequently found the head of the Australian Defence League and two other people being charged over a brawl near a mosque in Sydney’s Islamic heartland—Lakemba.

The news that Sulayman Khalid, 20, was one of two men arrested on Christmas Eve as part of an ongoing counter-terrorism investigation into the alleged planning of a terrorist attack on Australian soil — has only increased such unease.

As the Daily Telegraph reported:

“Khalid, also known as Abu Bakr, appeared earlier this year on SBS’s Insight wearing a jacket emblazoned with the Islamic State flag and stormed off the set when questioned about his support for IS fighters.”

France has this week also seen three supposedly “lone wolf” incidents allegedly involving “deranged” Muslim perpetrators in:

1. Nantes - when a van was driven into a crowd killing one and wounding 9 other shoppers

2. Dijon - where a man shouting “allahu akbar” (“God is greatest” in Arabic) injured 13 in a similar attack to that in Nantes

3. Tours - where an attacker - also yelling “allahu akbar” - was shot dead after stabbing three police officers

Meaningless OIC condemnatory statements designed to distance Islam from Islamic State are no longer sufficient.

Surely the time has come for the OIC to galvanise its member States into pledging unified Islamic military action to degrade and destroy Islamic State.

Such steps could include:

1. OIC resolving that all 57 member States join the American-led coalition of 62 States presently fighting Islamic State. Presently only 13 of those Islamic States have joined the coalition. Major Islamic States — such as Malaysia, Indonesia, Algeria, Pakistan and Nigeria remain uncommitted.

2. Making a unified Islamic approach to the United Nations Security Council by sponsoring a resolution calling for the use of armed force by the United Nations against Islamic State under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter.

3. Four Islamic States — Malaysia, Nigeria, Chad and Jordan — are members of the UN Security Council and provide an effective bloc to pressure the Security Council — particularly those States exercising a veto - into taking such action.

Growing Islamoparanoia needs to be contained - if rampant Islamophobia is not allowed to run riot.

Jews Condemned Whilst Christians Are Decimated And Dispersed

[Published 1 August 2014]


As the war between Israel and Hamas enters its fourth week - the frenzied condemnation of Israel for exercising its inherent right of self-defence continues to dominate the media coverage of the conflict.

Ishaan Tharoor writing in the Washington Post wonders why:

“The world is transfixed by the conflict in Gaza, as the death tolls of both Palestinians and Israelis killed in the fighting continue to rise. It has animated global public opinion and sparked protests in myriad far-flung cities.

But as the rockets and bombs fall, a deadlier war next door rolls on. The Syrian civil war has claimed 170,000 lives in three years; this past weekend’s death toll in Syria was greater than what took place in Gaza. By some accounts, the past week may have been the deadliest in the conflict’s grim history. Meanwhile, the extremist insurgents of the Islamic State (also known as ISIS), have continued their ravages over a swath of territory stretching from eastern Syria to the environs of Baghdad, Iraq’s capital; the spike in violence in Iraq has led to more than 5,500 civilian deaths in the first six months of this year.”

M D Harmon writing in the Portland Herald criticises this media blockout:

“Why should it matter if a nearly 2,000-year-old way of life practiced by millions is being exterminated and no one will do anything to halt it?

Perhaps because it teaches a wider lesson about what the civilized world faces when it confronts rampant Islamic extremism.

In much of Iraq and Syria today, millions of Christians, whose ancestral presence there predates current Muslim majorities by centuries, are being scrubbed out of their homes.

But, while some in the wider church and the media are paying attention, getting war-weary Western nations to take effective action seems impossible. Even humanitarian aid isn’t being widely discussed.”

The newly-declared Islamic State (IS) - which includes Mosul - Iraq’s second largest city - already exceeds the area of Great Britain.

Sharia law has been imposed in Mosul - where Christians have lived since shortly after the death of Christ.

Christians were given 24 hours to leave Mosul or convert to Islam and pay a tax - or die.

The letter “N” (for “Nazarene”) has been daubed on Christian homes to denote they are available for looting or destruction.

BBC News reported on 28 July:

“A senior Christian cleric in Iraq, Patriarch Louis Sako, estimated that before the advance of IS, Mosul had a Christian community of 35,000 - compared with 60,000 prior to 2003.

According to the UN, just 20 families from the ancient Christian minority now remain in the city, which Isis has taken as the capital of its Islamic state.”

Harmon poses this question:

“Across the Middle East, a long history of hard-won co-existence faces extinction from a belief system devoted to domination, and this time in control of an “Islamic state.” Will it again strike us directly, as it did 13 years ago this Sept. 11?”

Nuri Kino - reported on Fox News - confirms the tragic situation in Syria and identifies those engaged in persecuting these ancient Christian communities:

“Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, also has been nearly emptied of Assyrians, Armenians and other non-Muslims…

... The prideful tone in which the perpetrators speak whenever I have interviewed them — both Al Qaeda and IS——is equally shocking. These are mostly disgruntled young men who were teetering on the edges of society in their own homelands, often in European suburbs, and now believe they have the power to do whatever they want in the name of Islam. They can claim any house in IS-controlled areas of Iraq and Syria as their own, and tell the owners to either leave or risk being killed. They can take any woman as their wife…

... At least 700, 000 non-Muslims — Christians, Mandeans, Yezidis and others—have left Iraq by now. No one knows how many have left Syria.”

Nina Shea reports in Fox News:

“ISIS has set out to erase every Christian trace. All 30 churches were seized and their crosses stripped away. Some have been permanently turned into mosques. One is the Mar (Saint) Ephraim Syriac Orthodox Cathedral, newly outfitted with loudspeakers that now call Muslims to prayer. The 4th century Mar Behnam, a Syriac Catholic monastery outside Mosul, was captured and its monks expelled, leaving behind a library of early Christian manuscripts and wall inscriptions by 13th-century Mongol pilgrims.

Christian and Shiite gravesites, deemed idolatrous by ISIS, are being deliberately blown up and destroyed, including on July 24, the tomb of the 8th-century B.C. Old Testament Prophet Jonah, and the Muslim shrine that enclosed it.”

Patrick Coburn does not mince his words in The Independent:

“It is the greatest mass flight of Christians in the Middle East since the Armenian massacres and the expulsion of Christians from Turkey during and after the First World War.”

Yet the media shows little interest in exposing the decimation and dispersal of the Christian communities in Syria and Iraq.

Google reports on the Israel-Gaza war outnumber reports on the ISIS-Christian conflict by about 20:1.

The West is equally as disinterested at this appalling ethnic and religious cleansing and forced transfer of Christians.

An impotent United Nations shows its unwillingness to intervene.

Israel meanwhile ensures that Jews will never find themselves in the same boat as the abandoned and hapless Christians.

Palestine - PLO And Hamas Threaten Split Over Islamic State

[Published 6 July 2014]



The declaration of the Islamic State on the first day of the holy fasting month of Ramadan threatens once again to embroil the recently reconciled PLO and Hamas in renewed and violent confrontation after just ending their seven year internecine feud - destroying any hope of ever achieving a Palestinian Arab State between Jordan and Israel.

The Islamic State is a self styled Caliphate - a system of rule that ended in 1924 after the fall of the Ottoman Empire.

The statement declaring its establishment reads:

“Here the flag of the Islamic State ... rises and flutters. Its shade covers land from Aleppo [Syria] and Diyala [Iraq]. The infidels are disgraced. The Sunnis are masters and are esteemed. The people of heresy are humiliated. The Sharia penalties are implemented, all of them. The front lines are defended, crosses and graves demolished. Governors and judges have been appointed, a tax has been enforced and courts will resolve disputes and complaints.”

The Islamic State already controls large swathes of northern Iraq after a sustained assault which began with the overthrow of Iraqi control of the country’s second largest city of Mosul, near the Syrian border, on June 9.

Over the last two years it has established a strong presence in parts of Syria, controlling key oil fields in eastern Syria in the area bordering Iraq, levying taxes and other penalties and implementing strict Sharia law on besieged communities.

At its head as Caliph - the self-proclaimed successor to the Prophet Mohammed - is Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi - whose spokesman has made his intentions clear:

“The time has come for those generations that were drowning in oceans of disgrace, being nursed on the milk of humiliation, and being ruled by the vilest of all people, after their long slumber in the darkness of neglect—the time has come for them to rise,”

Will Hamas rise and throw its weight behind this new Caliph - given the following provisions of Article 11 of the Hamas Charter:

“... Palestine is an Islamic Waqf throughout all generations and to the Day of Resurrection. Who can presume to speak for all Islamic Generations to the Day of Resurrection? This is the status [of the land] in Islamic Shari’a, and it is similar to all lands conquered by Islam by force, and made thereby Waqf lands upon their conquest, for all generations of Muslims until the Day of Resurrection. This [norm] has prevailed since the commanders of the Muslim armies completed the conquest of Syria and Iraq, and they asked the Caliph of Muslims, ‘Umar Ibn al-Khattab, for his view of the conquered land, whether it should be partitioned between the troops or left in the possession of its population, or otherwise. Following discussions and consultations between the Caliph of Islam, ‘Umar Ibn al-Khattab, and the Companions of the Messenger of Allah, be peace and prayer upon him, they decided that the land should remain in the hands of its owners to benefit from it and from its wealth; but the control of the land and the land itself ought to be endowed as a Waqf [in perpetuity] for all generations of Muslims until the Day of Resurrection. The ownership of the land by its owners is only one of usufruct, and this Waqf will endure as long as Heaven and earth last. Any demarche in violation of this law of Islam, with regard to Palestine, is baseless and reflects on its perpetrators.”

Hamas has reserved the right to resist the temptation to blindly pledge its allegiance to this newly declared Caliph and the Islamic State under article 23 of the Hamas Charter:

“The Hamas views the other Islamic movements with respect and appreciation. Even when it differs from them in one aspect or another or on one concept or another, it agrees with them in other aspects and concepts. It reads those movements as included in the framework of striving [for the sake of Allah], as long as they hold sound intentions and abide by their devotion to Allah, and as along as their conduct remains within the perimeter of the Islamic circle.”

The PLO also needs to reassess its recently established symbiotic relationship with Hamas given that there appears to be far more common ground in the stated aims and objectives of Hamas and the Islamic State than exists between Hamas and the PLO.

This view is reinforced by Article 27 of the Hamas Charter:

” Under the influence of the circumstances which surrounded the founding of the PLO, and the ideological invasion which has swept the Arab world since the rout of the Crusades, and which has been reinforced by Orientalism and the Christian Mission, the PLO has adopted the idea of a Secular State, and so we think of it. Secular thought is diametrically opposed to religious thought. Thought is the basis for positions, for modes of conduct and for resolutions. Therefore, in spite of our appreciation for the PLO and its possible transformation in the future, and despite the fact that we do not denigrate its role in the Arab-Israeli conflict, we cannot substitute it for the Islamic nature of Palestine by adopting secular thought.”

Hamas and the PLO have always been perfectly up front and transparent in their declared aims and objectives. The problem has always been the inability of the West to believe them.

Maybe they now will.

God help them if they don’t.

Headhunt Hamas or Heil Haniyeh

[Published January 2010]

What is Israel - and the World - to conclude when Gaza’s Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh addresses 100000 cheering Gazan Arabs on 14 December 2009 to mark 22 years since the formation of Hamas and tells them:

“We will never give up on Palestine from the [Jordan] river to the [Mediterranean] sea.

It is not enough for Hamas to liberate Gaza, nor to establish an emirate in Gaza, nor a state, nor an independent entity… Hamas strives to liberate all of Palestine.”

Is this the rant of a madman or a leader on a deadly - but seemingly hopeless - mission to get rid of 6.5 million Jews who live in what was formerly 22% of the British Mandate for Palestine - today called Israel and the West Bank?

When Haniyeh talks of liberating “all of Palestine“ does he also include the remaining 78% that is today called Jordan?

Is his territorial conquest only related to “all of Palestine” or does it extend far beyond Palestine’s former boundaries?

One can draw an analogy in Haniyeh’s message with a disbelieving world which blithely ignored Hitler’s warnings in his book “Mein Kampf” - written in 1923 - calling for territorial conquest and a war on the Jews. 16 years later and because of such complacency World War 2 resulted.

Hitler was in 1923 the failed leader of a coup, possibly a future potential leader but without power, land or an army and languishing in prison. His writings in 1923 could have been regarded as no more than expressed fantasies incapable of fulfillment.

Hamas- formed in 1987 - had its own constitution which clearly set out its quest for the identical goals as Hitler wrote about in 1923 - territorial conquest and a war on the Jews - but in addition contained provisions calling for the subjugation of Christianity and Judaism to Islam, the defeat of secularism and the overthrow of secular Arab regimes making peace with Israel.

The major difference from 1923 was that the Jews now had their own country - Israel - and an army to defend them. Israel represented the major obstacle to Hamas achieving all its stated goals.

This made the Hamas fantasy far more difficult to believe as its sights were directed towards the improbable destruction of Israel as the first step in achieving its international ambitions.

Hamas in 1987 - like Hitler in 1923 - was a dream without any foundation of power, land or an army.

Yet today Hamas exercises power and rules over territory which contains 1.5 million citizens. Gaza is home to a large number of terrorist groups many of whom swear allegiance to Hamas and others who are allowed to operate from Gaza with impunity.

Hamas has an army of well trained and disciplined fighters and is steadily building up a huge supply of rockets and armaments in pursuit of its goal to liberate all of Palestine.

The acquisition of nuclear weapons by Hamas cannot be discounted.

Haniyeh’s coup in ousting the Palestinian Authority from political control of Gaza in 2007 did not fail as Hitler did in 1923 - but was achieved in a matter of days with spectacular success.

Whilst the governments of Canada, the European Union, Israel, Japan, Australia, and the United States classify Hamas as a terrorist organization - Haniyeh basks in the international limelight with such persons as Iran’s Ahmadinejad, Syria’s Assad, Britain’s George Galloway and former American President Jimmy Carter beating a path to his door.

Haniyeh hides behind the findings of the Goldstone Report believing Israel’s hands are tied in the actions it can take in future to uproot Hamas from Gaza following its unsuccessful attempt to do so one year ago.

Haniyeh basks in the international opprobrium following Israel’s invasion that sees well meaning but ill informed organizations and members of the public focusing their anger on Israel for seeking to protect its citizens from threats like that being uttered by Haniyeh - instead calling for boycotts of - and divestment from - anything that has to do with Israel.

These sympathisers ignore the provisions of the Hamas Covenant which provide that:

1. Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences are in contradiction of the principles of Hamas… These conferences are only ways of setting the infidels in the land of the Moslems as arbitrators.
2. There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavours.
3. Liberation of Palestine is an individual duty for every Moslem wherever he may be. It is necessary to instill in the minds of the Moslem generations that the Palestinian problem is a religious problem, and should be dealt with on this basis.
4. Freemasons, Rotary Clubs and Lions Clubs, are nothing more than cells of subversion and saboteurs… These organizations operate in the absence of Islam …. The Islamic peoples should perform their role in confronting the conspiracies of these saboteurs. The day Islam is in control of guiding the affairs of life, these organizations, hostile to humanity and Islam, will be obliterated.
5. Jews were behind World War I, when they were able to destroy the Islamic Caliphate,making financial gains and controlling resources. They obtained the Balfour Declaration,formed the League of Nations through which they could rule the world. They were behind World War II, through which they made huge financial gains by trading in armaments, and paved the way for the establishment of their state. It was they who instigated the replacement of the League of Nations with the United Nations and the Security Council to enable them to rule the world through them. There is no war going on anywhere, without having their finger in it.
6. Leaving the circle of conflict with Israel is a major act of treason and it will bring curse on its perpetrators. Egypt has already been cast out of the conflict, to a very great extent through the treacherous Camp David Accords, and she has been trying to drag other countries into similar agreements in order to push them out of the circle of conflict. [Jordan has since signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994 - author]
7. Israel, Judaism and Jews challenge Islam and the Moslem people.
8. Under the wing of Islam, it is possible for the followers of the three religions - Islam,Christianity and Judaism - to coexist in peace and quiet with each other. Peace and quiet would not be possible except under the wing of Islam.
9. Secular thought is diametrically opposed to religious thought.

These are no longer expressed fantasies being dreamt up by someone powerless to execute them - nor are they limited to hatred of Jews only. Christians, secularists,and Arab States making peace with Israel are also targets.

From the Hamas perspective the time for achieving these goals is rapidly approaching - particularly as consistent efforts are made by many in the international community to delegitimize the State of Israel.

There is no longer any room for complacency - as might have existed in 1987. Appeasement is not an option.

The defeat of Hamas and its hatred filled agenda, its removal from Gaza and the freeing of Gaza’s citizens fed up with the devastation wreaked by Hamas control must be confronted and dealt with before Hamas sucks the world into another unwanted war.

UN Security Council Flirts With Racist Fantasyland

[Published December 2008]

“All these attacks prove that settlers are dangerous and that it’s impossible to live with them. If these settlers are allowed to stay, that would mean more friction and confrontation. Peace can be achieved only if Israel withdraws to the last centimetre of the Palestinian territories occupied in 1967” - Ahmed Qurei , Head of Palestinian Authority Negotiating Team – Jerusalem Post - 13 December 2008

This call to remove every Jew living in the West Bank – 500000 men, women and children - was accepted in total silence by the United Nations. No urgent meeting of the General Assembly or any of its Human Rights Committees was called to condemn this racial vilification of Jews by a former Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority and its chief negotiator with Israel.

One remembers how fervently world leaders correctly argued that you couldn’t blame all Moslems for the terrorist actions of those few who hijack Islam and commit horrible atrocities worldwide in the name of Allah.

No similar statements were heard from those same leaders this week condemning Mr Queri for calling for the removal of those 500000 Jews because of the misguided actions of a few.

Collective punishment – not to be tolerated for Gazan Arabs – was perfectly acceptable when it involved West Bank Jews.

Indeed the UN Security Council met just three days after Mr. Qurei’s outrageous statement –yet raised not one word of protest or censure at his highly offensive and hate-ridden remarks.

Instead it passed Resolution 1850 (2008) by 14 votes to 0 - with Libya abstaining – declaring:

“its support for the negotiations initiated at Annapolis on 27 November 2007 and its commitment to the irreversibility of the bilateral negotiations”

and called on

“both parties to fulfil their obligations under the Performance-Based Roadmap, as stated in their Annapolis Joint Understanding and refrain from any steps that could undermine confidence or prejudice the outcome of negotiations.”

One could not imagine a more destructive statement designed to undermine confidence or to prejudice the outcome of the Annapolis negotiations than that delivered by Mr. Qurei.

His demand defiantly flies in the face of the written commitment given by President Bush to Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on 14 April 2004 – forming an integral part of the Roadmap negotiating process under the auspices of the Quartet - America, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations.

In that letter President Bush stated:

“As part of a final peace settlement, Israel must have secure and recognized borders, which should emerge from negotiations between the parties in accordance with UNSC Resolutions 242 and 338. In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949, and all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the same conclusion. It is realistic to expect that any final status agreement will only be achieved on the basis of mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities. “

In declaring its support for the Annapolis negotiations the Security Council conveniently ignored the basis on which those negotiations were undertaken by Israel as expressed in these clear and unambiguous terms by its Prime Minister – Ehud Olmert – at the opening of the Annapolis conference:

“The negotiations will be based on previous agreements between us, U.N. Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, the road map and the April 14, 2004 letter of President Bush to the Prime Minister of Israel.”

All the international players sitting in the Security Council – including outgoing US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice – were surely aware that Mr Qurei’s statement sounded the death knell for the Annapolis negotiations and signalled the end of any hope for a successful outcome of those negotiations.

Yet instead of condemning Mr Qurei’s statement - or demanding its retraction - Ms. Rice had the effrontery to tell the Security Council that Israeli and Palestinian negotiators:

“had made the choice to defeat an ideology of hatred with one of hope”

The only conclusion that one can draw from the Security Council’s extraordinary conduct in totally ignoring Mr Qurei’s statement is its unwillingness to face up to the fact that Annapolis is finished, President Bush’s dream has turned into a nightmare and the Quartet’s strategy in backing President Bush’s Roadmap has exposed it as totally impotent in having any influence to determine the allocation of sovereignty in the West Bank between Jews and Arabs.

The Security Council by its silence has offered encouragement to those Jew haters like Mr Qurei who for the last 130 years have opposed Jews having any right to live in their biblical homeland – the West Bank - or indeed within any part of the 23% of Palestine designated by the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the United Nations Charter as the site for the reconstitution of the Jewish National Home.

In doing nothing to disavow the Arabs from pursuing their long standing enmity and racial hatred of the Jews, the Security Council has ignored a whole body of international law on the issue and given comfort to the long held Arab view that everything done since the creation of the Mandate in 1920 is deemed null and void.

“Jews out” is indeed a call that is still alive and kicking in the Middle East.

This racist fantasyland has been given a considerable boost by the Security Council’s flirtation with - and failure to unequivocally repudiate - Mr Qurei’s remarks when endorsing Resolution 1850.

United Nations efforts to eliminate all forms of racism worldwide have been seriously compromised.

RIP President Bush’s Performance –Based Roadmap. RIP Annapolis. RIP the United Nations.

The West Bank - Terrorize or Jordanize?

[Published May 2007]

Gaza has become a basket case as Arab kills Arab in a fight for power and control between Fatah and Hamas.

Simultaneously Kassam rockets are being fired indiscriminately from Gaza into civilian population centres in Israel inviting retaliation by Israel that has so far been remarkably restrained but threatens to erupt into all out war.

Gaza’s population has become totally dysfunctional embracing a culture of death and martyrdom rather than engage in the project of nation building following Israel‘s unilateral withdrawal in 2005.

A Mickey Mouse look alike cartoon character called Farfur stars in a children’s television show exhorting young viewers to look forward to Islam dominating the world, one in three men carries a gun, and a bewildering number of armed groups roam the streets at will in an environment of complete lawlessness.

Murders, kidnappings and torching of public buildings are happening with regular frequency.

Now the web site Debkafile has reported (May 21) that Hamas military chief Mohammad Jabari has instructed all West Bank cells to launch suicide attacks in Israeli towns forthwith and that sniper teams should target roads on the West Bank as well as Jerusalem and the Sharon district in Israel.

Not one word protesting such a call to arms has been heard from Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas, or Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh.

The West Bank’s Arab residents now face a real dilemma as a result Jabari’s proclamation, which comes precisely at the time that Jordan’s King Abdullah has been taking tentative steps to re-enter the West Bank, which it last occupied between 1948-1967.

Jordan is the key to resolving the issue of sovereignty in the West Bank - just five per cent of historic Palestine and the only area remaining unallocated between the Arabs - who currently hold 78% called Jordan and Gaza - and the Jews - who currently hold 17% called Israel.

Jordan ceded all claims to the West Bank in 1988. At that time Jordan’s then monarch, King Hussein, in an address to the nation on 31 July 1988 said this action was “taken only in response to the wish of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, and the prevailing Arab conviction that such measures will contribute to the struggle of the Palestinian people and their glorious uprising”

That decision has turned out disastrously for the Arab residents of Gaza and the West Bank, who have seen their hopes and aspirations wrecked on the dreams of a leadership that has always had the destruction of the State of Israel as its goal, despite frequently claiming that it had abandoned that policy.

Brought back to Gaza and the West Bank in 1994 from exile in Tunisia where they had been plotting and murdering since being expelled from Lebanon in 1982 to which they had gone after being driven out of Jordan in 1970, that leadership including Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas, has turned “the glorious uprising” into a bewildering number of lost opportunities in the last 13 years to cement a peace treaty with Israel and end the Arab-Israel conflict.

The insistence of that leadership that Israel surrender every square inch of Gaza and the West Bank to them to allow the creation of a second Arab State in Palestine -in addition to Jordan - with Jerusalem as its capitol, as well as allowing millions of Arabs to go and live in Israel, have proved to be stumbling blocks that were and will always be incapable of resolution.

What then should happen with the Arab populations of Gaza and the West Bank?

Unless there are radical changes in Gaza, it will continue to be a hotbed of rejectionism and hatred of Israel. The population has become so traumatised by the ongoing struggles of the last 13 years that it is impossible to see how moderation and reason can prevail that will lead to the inhabitants breaking the pattern of hatred and violence that has become a feature of every aspect of their lives.

The West Bank Arabs have better choices as Israel has kept a tighter lid on the development of terrorist cells, armed gangs and the smuggling and supply of weapons to the region.

The just announced arrest by Israel of a Palestinian Cabinet Minister and 32 other Hamas leaders in the West Bank signals a determined approach by Israel to maintaining that policy.

No one should be complacent. The situation in the West Bank could well explode if Jabari’s path of terrorism is heeded. Its prevention will require the wholehearted co-operation of the population in exposing those who would seek to impose on the population the same kind of misery and suffering presently occurring in Gaza.

Jordan is now poised to return to centre stage in the West Bank as the Palestinian Authority loses all semblance of control and the two state solution proposed by the Quartet and the Arab League involving the creation of a new Arab state between Jordan and Israel slowly sinks into oblivion.

Jordan offers the best hope to end the Israeli occupation of the Arab populated areas of the West Bank.

Jordan is the most suitable negotiating Arab partner to resolve with Israel - within the framework of their existing peace treaty - the competing claims by Jews and Arabs to sovereignty in the West Bank.

The Arab League and the Quartet need to understand that the West Bank in 2007 is a vastly different place to what it was in 1988 or 1994 and need to actively support and encourage Jordan to enter into and assume sovereignty over the Arab populated areas of the West Bank within the boundaries of an expanded state of Jordan.

The Arab residents of the West Bank now have a stark choice to make - become citizens of Jordan or heed Jabari’s advice and proceed down the path of madness and terrorism taken by their Gaza brethren.

To terrorize or Jordanize? - that is the question.